Morning Glories
by Flashing The Floods
Summary: A ball of deep orange bloomed over the treetops, vibrant against the blanket of periwinkle that had replaced the stars. It was the first sunrise Dimitry had seen since he was alive, wholesomely alive with lungs that took in air and eyes of a natural hazel.


**Author's Note: Happy October! Felt like writing a seasonal crappy oneshot, and who better to write it about than Dimitry? Warning for some cursing and suicide. **

Mary's small, slender fingers curved around the morning glory's stem and freed it from the earth with a single tug. She tucked it daintily behind her ear and turned to him as the first rays of sunlight peaked over the treetops. The wispy beam sparkled in her cornsilk tendrils and danced in her smile. "Does this look nice, Dimitry?"

"No," he chimed, feeling his lips curve into a teasing grin.

She gasped in mock-offense and playfully swatted his shoulder. "How rude!"

"Ahh, but you haven't let me finish. It doesn't look nice, no. It looks better than nice." He lightly fingered the morning glory's petals. "It looks lovely, and brings out your beautiful eyes."

"You flatter me, Dimitry." She gazed at him with those eyes, demure heather pools that glimmered in the sunlight as it steadily settled over the entire landscape. He melted under them and had to bring her closer. Touching Mary, feeling her against him, bringing her as close as he could, and holding her for as long as he was allowed, was simply an instinct that needed to be fulfilled. As easy and necessary as breathing.

He took her around the waist and reeled her in, relishing the way her gasp of surprise puffed against his neck. She nestled her head against his chest and wrapped her arms around him. Dimitry was the man, and therefore the one who was supposed to protect her. And yet, when she returned the embrace and her slender arms enveloped him in nurturing vise, he was the one who felt safe. He was the one who felt secure, and would as long as she never ever let go.

"I can hear your heartbeat," she murmured into the fabric of his vest.

"And I can feel yours," he replied. Her modest breasts pressed into his torso and the organ behind them thumped rhythmically against him. Thump. Thump. Thump.

THUMP!

Dimitry awoke with a start, snapping to a sit. Alert carmine orbs flickered from one end of the room to the other, sharp for whatever caused the ruckus. It didn't take him long to spot. Another rafter had fallen from the castle's ceiling and crashed to the crumbling stone below. He felt a sense of dejection upon looking at it. His home had held out for a very, very long time, but lately it seemed the weathering process was rapidly taking its toll.

Immortality may have possessed Dimitry, but the castle was left to deteriorate like everything else in the natural world.

He wearily sighed and stood, stepping out of the coffin he rested in and inclining his head to the window. The shining stars and harvest moon greeted his visual question. Might as well venture into the night. If one could call it venturing.

The vampire emerged from the creaking castle doors and looked across the cemetery before him. Yes, a cemetery filled with remains long-rotted and likely reduced to dust. That is what became of the splendid wildflower field that he'd clutched Mary so near in, morning after morning when she insisted on rising at the crack of dawn so they could see the morning glories bloom. Back in those days, holding her was as vital as breathing.

But the undead don't need to breathe.

He meandered to her gravesite, stroking her headstone as lovingly as his fingertips once cherished her face. The dream was still fresh and vivid in his mind. It left a dull ache in the heart that no longer pumped lifeblood through his veins.

Dimitry knew he shouldn't dwell on the pain. Mary wouldn't have wanted him to. She would have cried for his pain, made it her pain because she loved him more than she loved herself and wouldn't ever let him suffer alone. But he was suffering alone. She was long gone, a decrepit skeleton in a box beneath him and an intangible spirit in the heavens above him. He could not reach her.

If only. If only he had made it one goddamn day sooner. She would be beside him now, her smaller hand clasped in his and a kind smile on her elegant lips.

His failure was another thing he knew he should not dwell on. He'd spent time after time doing that, particularly during the first century where he was so distraught with the loss of her and what he had become, and how that was basically all wasted; and it was so hard to adapt to being something entire opposite from what he once was and not having a soul in the world to guide him. The first century was what he imagined hell to be like, what it must feel like because there is a certain agony is losing your routine and wandering in solitude that can't possibly be matched by any other kind of torment.

However, he had learned to adapt. Nothing was as awful as the first century. The next many had been spent in stride.

Now, the vampire wasn't even sure how many had gone by. Five, six, seven, eight? Maybe even nine or ten.

He was still in a condition infinitely better than the one he'd spent that first, grueling century in. And yet...And yet Dimitry felt as though his eternity was growing brittle. Loneliness shadowed him and stretched from the corners of his mind. His gothic palace was decaying away. The hunger for human contact was even stronger than the hunger for human blood, and that left him feeling dull and inarticulate. He truly wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.

"Are you okay, Dimitry?" The soft flapping of wings sounded in his ears.

"Good evening, Black." He turned to the bat and offered a feeble, fanged smile. "I'm feeling a bit sluggish is all. I'm sure I'll be fine once I've have something to eat." The bat's pearly pink eyes glittered into his with worry. Pink eyes. Pink flecks in the wings. No bat really looked like that. It was probably hypocritical and oxymoronic for a vampire to be able to judge what was and what was not possible, but Dimitry couldn't help having the opinion. He'd found Black's color schemes odd since the very first time he'd laid eyes on the flying mammal. He'd found them to be explicitly incorrect shortly afterward.

"Tell me something, Black." He tilted his head, feeling apology swim in his eyes because it was a bit rude to ask what he never had before, but somehow felt was essential to know now.

"Yes?"

"Are you real?"

"As real as you are, Dimitry."

The vampire supposed that answer was fair enough.

He never got around to scouring the forest for consumption. He spent the rest of the night beside Mary's grave, talking to her about the good old days and reminiscing to the wind. There was time after time to talk about, memories to run through and repeat. He could spend hours on end talking to Mary, whether or not she talked back. He liked to think that she did. He liked to think that he just couldn't quite hear her. It occurred to him at some point that the sky was growing lighter with the hints of daybreak. He didn't mention it to her, but she knew of course.

Ah yes, eternity had grown brittle indeed. It was like a specialty thread that could only be cut with a certain kind of scissors. Dimitry had considered snipping it now and then in the past, but those thoughts were always brushed aside for one reason or another. They were usually:

1. Mary would not want him to do it.

2. Whatever kind of heaven existed, Mary was undoubtably in it, and he wasn't sure he would be.

Vampires were, after all, often regarded as demonic creatures. Demons came from Hell, correct? So logically speaking, they would return to Hell. If they went anywhere at all. Dimitry heard rumors that the reason vampires didn't see their reflection was because they had no souls. They were empty, animated beings. Soulless, they either existed or they didn't. If this rumor was true (hell if he knew what lore was true and what wasn't, he hadn't had contact with another vampire since the day he was bitten), Dimitry supposed that meant he wouldn't be anywhere at all.

All things considered, ending his eternity was a rather daunting consideration.

And yet, even as he noticed the sky growing lighter and the stars fading out, he did not return to the safety of his coffin. He stayed in the damp grass beside the resting place of his beloved and stroked her cracked headstone.

A ball of deep orange bloomed over the treetops, vibrant against the blanket of periwinkle that had replaced the stars. Shimmery rays extended from its lifting emergence, dusting the world in gauzy gold and twirling through the crisp autumn air. It was the first sunrise Dimitry had seen since he was alive, wholesomely alive with lungs that took in air and eyes of a natural hazel. And it was beautifully breathtaking, though he possessed no breath to take.

His skin sizzled. It went alight when the first wispy beam peaked over his flesh. Flames as brilliant as the sunrise broke out along his arms and burst through the material of his jacket. His hair smoked as it fried, and his eyes burned with the horrible, acrid reek of his preserved skin melting. His mouth gaped open in a soundless cry of pain, his throat too charred to push the noise out. No words could describe that pain, but Dimitry's racing thoughts briefly revoked the idea that there was no other torment to match the suffering of being pitifully clueless and all alone.

But surely he'd made the right choice. He could handle this pain. Mary was in pain for over two years, choking on her own blood and losing her gorgeous blonde tresses in grating handfuls, weakened to the point where she could no longer even get up to use the privy before she succumbed to that damned plague. As incredibly nightmarish as it was to be scorched down to the bone, it didn't take very long. It couldn't have been any longer than thirty seconds.

He fell onto his back, rolling and writhing as orange, red, and yellow swirled and flickered as they consumed him. But before his eyes were roasted out of their sockets, something very simple and delightful blossomed before Dimitry. A lone morning glory, flourishing in a sunbeam and opening its pale purple petals for the very first time.

* * *

**In early fall months, morning glories really do keep blooming where I live. My mom makes me wake up and pull them off her fence because they're weeds. That said, I dunno if they keep blooming in fall in other places o.O **


End file.
